Encouraging Teamwork in PS2

[Raka Maru]

Originally Posted by 2coolforu

The only true way to create teamwork is to force people to depend on others. One man MBT's is the worst thing you can do, for such a centrepiece of battles to be mostly solo controlled is a crippling blow to cooperation.

The reason Planetside had such a good playerbase was due to the fact it was impossible to get very far on your own, especially at the start.

I've had some really awesome gunners that took care of business till the bitter end. Jumped out and helped repair, covered me when I had to resupply. It will always be better to be teamed up, but forcing the gameplay to rely on randoms for success is velly velly bad.

I do like to solo a lot too. Does that mean I can't pull out my expensive tank for those times?

[TRex]

The incentive should be whatever xp you get for completing objectives , and cert points for your progression , and should always be tangeably a lot more than those rewarded for straight kills.
In ps1 you could either kill 3 or 4 people ,or stand looking at a cc for 15 minutes , and probably get better reward for killing those 4 .
It was just fucked up . People naturally went for option A , since standing defending wasn't sexy or fun , and gave you squat.
Have the kill stats or whatever ,believe me it keeps people playing , but give the real carrot as a reward for taking objectives and a bonus for being in a squad .And something for defending territory as well.
If you want to solo, nothing wrong with that , but give a bonus to being in a squad . If you always log in and have same squad leader each time , give a bonus for that .Hopefully command certs allow you to reduce the time it takes to hack an objective.
Don't pigeon hole people or restrict their playstyle ,instead give them incentives.
If you are command certed , I'd like to see like sergeant stripes etc or similar introduced . Completing objectives improves your rank , poor leadership gets you demoted.
It swings both ways .

[SKYeXile]

Well they are giving us an incentive to work together as a team, the whole resources thing, people want the resources to have improved gear so they they will try to hold and take land...if that results in massive amounts of KPM and K/D then SO BE IT!

[FIREk]

Actually, the mission system, with tangible objectives and squad leaders possibly being able to conveniently tag immediate targets etc, should be incentive enough.

[SKYeXile]

Originally Posted by FIREk

Actually, the mission system, with tangible objectives and squad leaders possibly being able to conveniently tag immediate targets etc, should be incentive enough.

what rewards are from completing missions?

[Bravix]

Originally Posted by Bags

No, it's a lot easier to get points for being a kill whore since they're worth as much as an entire objective.

Since when were kills worth 250, or even 200 at that? I'm almost 100% that they're worth 100 each, a bit more for headshots/savior etc.

You can get an easy 500 from sitting at a base a neutralizing/capping it, plus a couple more for killing the infidels who try to stop you.

[Traak]

Originally Posted by Bravix

Since when were kills worth 250, or even 200 at that? I'm almost 100% that they're worth 100 each, a bit more for headshots/savior etc.

You can get an easy 500 from sitting at a base a neutralizing/capping it, plus a couple more for killing the infidels who try to stop you.

Are you kidding? I used to get 2000xp + for shooting down a bomber.

Base cap XP was diddly compared to that.

[Bravix]

Originally Posted by Traak

Are you kidding? I used to get 2000xp + for shooting down a bomber.

Base cap XP was diddly compared to that.

Can you explain to me why you are using past tense? I am talking about BF3 after all. Not only are there no bombers (unless you call an A-10 a bomber), you surely don't get anywhere near that much for shooting aircraft down. It's like 100 for the disable and and another 50 if it blows up. If you manage to kill the jet with the person still in it, its like 200-250.

[TRex]

When they first brought in the lattice system and prior to it , getting 2500+ bep and 5000+cep per cap was common , a nice bonus at end of it all.
Don't just know when it went to pot , but like Traak says ,2000xp for a lib ,1300 for a vanguard versus ,what, 500 for a base makes it a no brainer.

[Bravix]

Again, I began by stating that I liked Battlefield 3's system. Not Planetside's 'system'.

[TRex]

Originally Posted by Bravix

Again, I began by stating that I liked Battlefield 3's system. Not Planetside's 'system'.

Sorry, had to scroll back a page or 2 to find the BF3 reference . I thought you'd entered wrong forum for a second there.

[Traak]

Oh. it was bf3? I meant PS.

[Furret]

Perhaps staying in the base SOI would give you experience for defending, much like the ANT experience, but much slower.

[Malorn]

I believe some of the purpose may have been missed from my meaning.

To break it down, Players will go after the things that are perceived as important measurements of success.

The reason K/D is a problem to teamwork in current FPS games is because its prominent position is a passive indicator to players that it is important and therefore something players should strive for.

If you ask someone in BF3 "how are you doing in this round" very few will report their score and almost none will say whether their team is winning or losing. Most will report their K/D, because that's 2 of the 3 things on the scoreboard. Most also don't even care whether they win or lose, they just try to maximize K, minimize D, and get score points when convenient.

The problem this has is that K/D is only indirectly related to the success of team and by promoting it they are actually discouraging teamwork because K/D is much more of an individual stat.

What I'm trying to get across here is that there is some psychology involved with players and what people choose to achieve will be significantly impacted by what the developers choose to value and promote stat-wise. Along with how they get rewarded for those behaviors.

What stats the developers make salient to us are the stats we will seek to improve. A corollary of that is that and we will do so at the cost things not made salient. This is why K/D is generally bad. Teamwork and objectives are not valued as highly and therefore not prioritized.

Therefore in very simple terms the purpose of the thread and proposal is to recognize this and promote things that further our respective empire's goals. Its subtle but it's significant.

Specifically for individual scoreboards that appear somewhere on our screen I would strongly recommend putting experience earned per-minute, which is an aggregation of all activities (kills as well as support), as well as indicators of empire-success like captures of towers, facilities, and resources, as well as defenses of the same. Don't flood it with tons of stats, and keep the personal achievement stats like K/D, etc off the main view.

What you put in front of us is what we'll work to maximize, so put stuff that encourages empire-wide success and puts reasonable weight on teamwork and support activities.

The result will be the population naturally gravitating towards activities they are good at which further the war effort and create intricate and complex massive clusterfuck battles.

[Raymac]

Originally Posted by Malorn

What you put in front of us is what we'll work to maximize, so put stuff that encourages empire-wide success and puts reasonable weight on teamwork and support activities.

The result will be the population naturally gravitating towards activities they are good at which further the war effort and create intricate and complex massive clusterfuck battles.

It's possible, but I think even if they totally bury the K/D stats, players will still seek them out and elevate their prominence on their own simply due to the fact that it is already so common across all shooters.

I like your idea of elevating other stats, but what you are suggesting is not just an adjustment in players minds, but a whole paradigm shift which will take much more than 1 game to change.